Movie review: Año bisiesto (Leap Year)

Well, this is not a "first date" movie. Nor is it fun for the whole family. It is the story of a woman who lives alone in Mexico City in miserable solitude, marking off the days of the calendar until the anniversary of her father's death. She works from home and really only leaves her apartment to pick up anonymous strangers for sex. We learn bits and pieces when her mother calls to pester or she talks to her work, but there is little conversation with most of the men she brings home. One in particular talks with his actual girlfriend on the phone longer than he does with her.

Even though we're held at arm's length from her character for a long time, there's still a feeling of being trapped there with her. She hardly ever leaves the apartment, so we don't either. We watch her watch TV, go to the bathroom, pick her nose, masturbate, eat cold soup out of a can, put groceries away, spy on the neighbors--we're forced to share in her loneliness.

I don't want to reveal what happens, but her life takes an interesting turn that becomes rather disturbing and then even rather more disturbing. I was actually kind of surprised that one scene in particular could be shown that graphically, especially in conservative-Catholic Mexico (those notches on her back aren't the only thing that is X about this movie). Maybe an independent film like this is under the radar of folks who howl about moral decay and whatnot.

The director is (strangely enough) an Australian, but has lived in Mexico for a while. The film feels really Mexican, and I wouldn't have known he was a foreign director if it wasn't for the fact that "una pelicula de Michael Rowe" kind of jumps out at you. (But then, what do I know, I'm a foreigner too).

Here's a link to a short trailer.

Movie review: Los herederos

The Museo de Arte de Zapopan has a weekly series of free movies, so Jenny and I have been going to practice our Spanish and take in a bit of high culture (not easy to do since Guadalajara is basically an overgrown village with some factories and urban sprawl tossed in). Last night we saw Los herederos (The Heirs), a film about child laborers in Mexico. It's a Frederick Wiseman-like documentary, with no narration at all. For the most part the camera just follows children as they make bricks, carry water, pick green beans, weave, make tortillas, and so on.

As the title ironically implies, they are the victims of generational poverty. The children depicted were all working in the countryside, but in different situations and areas of Mexico. On one hand, it was engrossing to watch kids who could do pretty intense work at an early age. How many 7 years olds do you know that can hitch up a mule? Or use jungle vines to tie fast a heavy bundle of firewood? Or use a machete? Many of the rich 18-20 year olds I teach probably couldn't even make a cup of coffee. In this sense there is something admirable about everyone from the 4 year old son to the 90 year old grandmother working together without complaint. Watching them follow a path through a cornfield to fetch water and plant seeds and feed the turkeys (a bird first domesticated by the ancient mesoamericans), you realize all of their ancestors did the same thing stretching back literally thousands of years.

The thing I enjoy about this style of documentary with no narration is that it invites you to daydream as you watch. I started to wonder if in all societies it has been normal for children to work just like everyone else at some point in history, and to imagine myself in the same situation.

Well, there is child labor and there is child labor. Other children in the film worked with their families picking produce on giant industrial farms. Both Jenny and I came to the same conclusion, that it seemed little better than slavery. The families were herded in and out of semi-trailers to do the same repetitive thing all day in the hot sun. It's outside, but its basically a factory from the 1800's. The thing that seems so horrible about children doing this kind of work is that they're not learning anything. They're being used as farm animals at a time when they should be playing, learning, growing, etc. Maybe the little girl helping her mother weave should be in school instead, but at least she's like an apprentice. Picking cucumbers all day on someone else's land there is nothing to learn, not much to be proud of, no way of improving yourself. And I'm sure they're paid so little that even with the whole family working they can't save a penny. Who owns this farm? How did they acquire it? The film doesn't tell us, but the history of Mexico is filled with examples of people forced to work for next to nothing on land they used to own before some culero took it away from them. I think if folks really wanted to stop illegal immigration, they would have to stop paying attention to America's toughest sheriff and start looking for solutions on this farm.

Here is a link to the trailer. There isn't much dialogue, so the language isn't important.

Movie review: El Infierno

Yesterday I watched a short BBC news clip about narcocine, which are generally straight to DVD flicks financed by drug lords to celebrate their exploits. Also mentioned was this controversial film El Infierno, (hell) currently playing in Mexican theaters. Jenny and I went out to see it last night.

If anything El Infierno mocks the lifestyle of the narcos, but that doesn't mean the government likes it. Mexican officials, including the president, have lined up to criticize this film, which is I think the best press coverage a movie like this could hope for. Like the U.S., Mexico is a country that engages in a fair amount of flag-draped patriotic gobbledygook. Those bicentennial México 2010 signs (see image) have become more conspicuous than taco stands. The graffiti scrawled under this one reads: nada que celebrar (nothing to celebrate). In a feat of admirable chutzpah, the director managed to get a fair amount of money out of the Mexican government to make this film, then released it right at the bicentennial. The film is over the top, violent, foul-mouthed, and really funny.

It follows the story of an espanglish speaking immigrant who is deported back to Mexico after 20 years to find that his brother became a chingón in the local mafia before being gunned down. Wanting to find out what happened to his brother and with few employment options, the humble pinche pocho slowly gets entangled in the world of narcotraficantes.

Exaggerated, casual, and even humorous violence has become fairly common in movies, but it was far stranger to see it in this one. In the U.S. we may indulge in such fantasies, but when was the last time you saw an actual news story (domestic) about someone beheaded with a chainsaw or dissolved in a barrel of acid? In Mexico this stuff really happens, which made this kind of scene very disturbing (especially with the whole audience, including myself, rolling with laughter).

We only got about half as many jokes as the rest of the audience, but it was still hilarious. It takes the piss out of every authority figure in Mexico, from politicians groveling at the feet of drug lords, to clergy sprinkling holy water on handguns for US $100 bills, to policemen who can be bribed with a handful of drugs, to federales who hand their informants back over to the mafia. One of the things I found funniest was all of the gaudy, tacky, chafa shit they spend their money on. The narcos strut around like peacocks with stuffed tigers and gold-tipped cowboy boots, while everything in the background is dust, concrete, and broken down cars. In one scene the main character, now a successful narco, decides to help out his godfather who runs a failing tire shop. A new, brightly painted store with flashing lights is shown where the ramshackle building once stood.

"Thanks," his dazed godfather replies with a straight face, "now all I need are customers."